Council on our strategic planning.

Strategic planning.

I don't know if Elise, you can show my my one slide.

A really good one.

Really good slide.

Okay, one sec.

Greatest slide.

Yeah.

You know me.

Man of many words.

I know.

Actually, I mean re-work hard on it.

All right.

Thank you, Council.

So we wanted to have just take a brief opportunity with the work session to talk to you guys about strategic uh planning session in the past.

What we've done is we've sent out an email and said, hey, send us topics and things you want to talk about.

And just to be brutally honest, it hasn't we'll hear from one or two council people, and that's about it.

And so the hope was in this setting in this venue, we might be able to get a few more opinions and thoughts and desires.

So this is kind of our outline for today.

The strategic planning sessions have been going on for the last five or six years.

We've been doing them.

It's an opportunity for council to kind of sit together and kind of work through some things outside of the council agenda and kind of you know the council agenda is fairly low level, but it allows you to get to that 30,000 foot level and set your priorities, set your goals, uh, talk about topics and issues that may not necessarily fit with the day-to-day operations of the city necessarily.

Um we've done everything from I don't recall what we did on the first one, but you know, we've we've done a SWOT analysis, we've done really focusing on the goals of the city council.

We did mission uh uh mission vision values types of conversations.

So there's a lot of opportunity to talk about pretty much anything you want.

Um traditionally it's been over uh a day or two.

We don't like to cram you all in a room for eight hours.

It can be unproductive after a certain period of time with a lot of thinking, but uh so later on we'll talk about sequence and schedule, so have that in the back of your mind of what's what you're interested in doing.

Uh we're when we were talking about this, we realize that there are gonna be some people who may or may not be on council, but I think it's valuable for the current council to set it up, get it established.

Um frankly, because you you're the ones who are kind of living in the moment now, um, and then whoever may be elected can just kind of fit right in and everything set up for them to just participate, really.

So to kick off the conversation, I guess I just wanted to ask you guys in your opinion.

Uh, you know, I said what went well, what can be improved, but more so than anything, if there's something that you would like to see repeated or or done again, or something that happened once and you said please do not ever do that again.

Um, those are certainly uh topics that we can avoid or address.

Um, for example, um well, I'll just I'll just leave it up to you guys if if you have any comments on on past sessions of things that you like and you would like to see included again this time, or if there's stuff that you just you know, adamant hey, I don't want to spend any time or energy on X.

Well, I'll start us off then.

Um, one of the things that I think goes really good with the council is a good uh budget talk.

Um, and start us off that way, you know, uh really grounding us in uh where we're at with the budget, what's it looking like, and uh you know what our parameters are and what things may come up and sneak up and what it's um I really like that one uh the best out of them all, you know, so that way council can focus, and then the other thing that I thought was really good is when we uh uh get to our top priorities, you know, and are able to have some time to discuss those top priorities and what they mean.

And I know that there's uh quite a bit as far as game to the top priorities, but uh I like uh I like that discussion and then the top priorities to me, those are the two most valuable things I've taken away with that.

Um Karen, um, as you know, usually um she does revisit what your top priorities of course were for last year, and she'll go you know come back to those a little bit just to determine whether or not those are those are still priorities, or um, if you guys want to develop new ones, or those some of those uh I'm sure probably we've made uh progress on, so those will maybe drop drop down, but you know, we'll uh generally we go through that process with her as well.

I would say to add to that two things that are kind of uh what we as staff are expecting to have occur are uh the the budget overview is is certainly something that we'll be doing, um, and then it's also an opportunity with strategic planning, and it doesn't have to be, but traditionally it has been, and I think it's valuable is to kind of establish the framework for the budget parameters resolution, so it gives us the the main backbone of what we're gonna start writing uh so that when it comes time for that resolution, the draft is is fairly ready to go, and with that incorporate in it are are typically your your current priorities.

Um that's one thing I'd like to add.

I'd also like to add uh um I know we set the budget prior parameters, but you know, in the past we've never gone back and asked the city manager um you know, areas that he sees in each department that either are you know for good or working fine or areas that we may have to you know keep up a little bit and areas that we may need to go down before we get into our budget parameter discussion of you know where we see the budget being we don't get a good conversation, so I'd like to have you kind of present that to us where you think you're at with each department.

So that dovetails a little bit, and again, I don't want to get too much out of sequence, but uh so when we talk about sequence, there we as a directors team, we have a strategic planning session as well.

Um, and so some of what I want to draw out from you all is you know your topics for consideration.

If there's something you need from us, uh that kind of tells if it's a chicken or egg first, right?

You know, do we need to go first to create a work product to give to you and deliver to you for your work session, or is it more we meet after you guys have met to put together an action plan based on what you want to do?

Um and so having said that, you know, again, if there's something that you want us to present and prepare, that's that's good to know, so then we can know if we need to meet beforehand to do to do some prep work.

So I guess that was one thought that I had was any information that maybe the directors have on problems that they see that we don't, or maybe uh problems that they've been um you know, talked to about the from the public.

So a different point of view than maybe what we're receiving from the public um might be good.

So just as a thought, you know, if the directors have any thoughts on areas that maybe we're just not aware of that need priority, it might be good to have that.

Go ahead, Jimmy.

Uh I did find the SWOT analysis to be really useful.

I was thinking maybe instead of going through the whole process, we could just bring back what we came up with last time and then just discuss and add or subtract if we need to.

Um, and actually honestly, the same thing for goal qualifiers.

I think we got a really great list, but I think just maybe having the little bit of a discussion with all of the new members about why these are the qualifiers and why we came up with them.

Other than a write-in campaign, we're only gonna have one new member.

But Lester, you weren't here last year when we did strategic planning.

So I guess too.

Yeah, so this will kind of be new to you, but but we do, yeah, but we do have the report, so you can review that as well.

And while I'm okay with talking about the previous goal qualifiers, I I know that I plan on going into this year with totally new eyesight after being on council for a year of what I think those qualifiers should be, just to be clear.